Chickpea Cucumber Salad

The mid-winter blues have been hitting me hard lately - so I thought a nice summertime salad might trick my brain into thinking it was 70 degrees outside.  This salad has only a few ingredients but they taste SO GOOD together.  It's also very light, so I like to pair it with BBQ or something heavy.  (Tonight we had meatloaf for dinner.)

Ingredients: onion, cucumber, tomato, chickpeas, seasoned salt and any vignette dressing

 

Chop stuff up: Drain a can of chickpeas and pour it in a bowl. Peel your cucumber and slice it.  I use English cucumbers because they don't have as many seeds. If you use a regular cucumber, you can slice it long-ways and then use a spoon to scoop out some of the seeds.  They don't add to the flavor and they water down the salad. Chop up about 1/2 a small onion. Chop a few tomatoes.  I used roma tomatoes because they seem to have more "meat" and less "junk".

 

Dressing/Seasoning: Add about 1-2 tsp. of your favorite seasoned salt.  Mine is by Tastefully Simple.  Then pour little vinaigrette over your chopped stuff. Maybe about 3 tablespoons. Your ingredients all have a lot of water in them, so you don't want it to be soggy.  I used a light caesar vinaigrette this time, but any you like will do. Or you can just add some olive oil or Italian dressing.

 

 

Wait and serve: Refrigerate your salad for about an hour before you eat it.  It will taste delicious right away, but it will taste AMAZING if you wait.  Then save your leftovers for lunch the next day.  It will be even better!